‘The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (the Department’s) Smart Metering Implementation Programme requires energy suppliers to replace 53 million meters in homes and small businesses with smart electricity and gas meters by 2020. The costs of installing smart meters, some £10.9 billion, will be borne by consumers through their energy bills. We are concerned that the Department is primarily relying on assumed competition in the industry to control costs and deliver benefits. This may well prove insufficient on its own to protect consumers. There is also a danger that the Government gets locked into an existing technology when technologies are changing fast – leading to consumers paying for investment in a system which is already out of date.’

I suspect Davey would argue that they are not wilfully driving us into penury, but merely prodding us proles into abandoning our energetically inefficient ways built on fossil fuel consumption. And that a new golden age of wind power awaits us, if only we could see the same economic light that his mentors have infused him with.

Even if Davey had spent a lifetime in engineering, this would come across as a load of dingo’s kidneys. Coming from a careerist politician with a background in PPE, I’m more inclined to think that he simply doesn’t get it, and probably never will. None of it.

Along with Huhne, he has done the most to destroy any confidence I had in a party that I used to vote for.

The good news is that Ed Davey is likely to be booted out of British politics sometime during Spring 2015.

The bad news is that Ed Davey is almost certain to be appointed to some EC Energy Commission from where he can continue to inflict his bone-headed idiocy on the British people sometime during Summer 2015.

many pensioner households have escaped fuel poverty because of the help older people receive with energy bills and the protection of pension levels.

Almost one in five families with children (18 per cent) are in fuel poverty in England, according to the latest statistics, with an average gap of almost £400 a year between a family’s energy bill and what it can afford.

Caroline Flint MP, the shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, who uncovered the figures for 2012, said Britain faced an “energy crisis”.

As well as families who could not afford their bills, millions more were “worrying about how they will make ends meet this winter”, she said.

Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, responded: “Overall fuel poverty has fallen year on year, but there’s still some way to go. Our energy efficiency plans are targeting help at those who need it most.”

Fiona Weir, the chief executive of Gingerbread, said: “Single parent families are hit harder by rises in fuel prices because a larger proportion of their outgoings have to go on the essentials, such as energy bills and food for their family. At the same time wages haven’t risen and cuts to tax credits and other benefits are putting many under serious financial pressure.”

The charity National Energy Action called for families to get help insulating their homes, and for ministers to consider extending the winter fuel payment, which is only paid to pensioners, to low-income households.

Levels of fuel poverty are high across the UK. In 2011 25 per cent of households in Scotland were categorised as “fuel poor” and 29 per cent in Wales.

It has long been apparent that the UK will have to undergo a severe bout of Slaughter of The Innocents due to fuel poverty before it acknowledges that its Quixotic love affair with windmills etc. is unsustainable.